Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1708: Spinning Out

Episode Date: June 17, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Jose Altuve forgoing a home run trot, then break down the details of MLB’s plan to enforce the rules against foreign-substance use starting on June 21, covering the pros and cons of putting that plan into action at midseason and opting to ban all substances, what the effects […]

Praying to someone, free me again. Oh, I'll be a good boy. Please make me well. I promise you ain't a thing. Get me out of this hell Cold turkey Has got me On a run Hello and welcome to episode 1708 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters.

I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of FanGraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. Well, it is sticky stuff all the time, yet again, in baseball this week and also on this episode. I think we will try to do something a little different next time if news allows. But today, more sticky stuff. And later in this episode, we will be talking to an Effectively Wild listener, Josh Beck, who is studying criminology. And he emailed us recently to point out some of the intersections between this story and his field and how the idea of deterrence in criminology might shape our thinking here about how this might play out. And it was an

interesting email. And we said, well, why don't you just come on the show to talk about it? So we'll be talking to Josh a little later and I want to get into a few reactions to the actual announcement of the policies on Tuesday. But just briefly, one thing I meant to mention last time, there was another example of an effectively wild hypothetical coming true and happening in a Major League Baseball game, which is that Jose Altuve hit a home run and did not do a home run trot, which is a question that we fielded recently. end up in a world where, as is evidently the case in a lot of softball leagues, home run hitters just don't take the trot, whether to save time or because it might be seen as showing up the opponent. Eventually, maybe the home run trot will be phased out and talked about that and about whether we thought that would ever happen.

But it did happen here. And the circumstances were strange of course but this was friday altuve hit a home run at target field and it was a weird one where it hit off the foul pole but then it ricocheted from the foul pole to a nearby wall and then caron back to the field and so it was kind of a tough call and the umpires called it a foul at first. And Altuve by then was rounding second. He had made it that far and the umpire said, nope, foul. And so he went back, but then there was a replay review. So he stood around waiting and then the call was overturned. And because I suppose the replay review had taken a while and this whole thing had gone on long enough, the umpires gave him

the option of just going back to the dugout and not actually completing the tater trot instead of starting anew or I don't know whether he'd pick up at second base again because that's where he was and then complete it or just do the whole round trip again like Michael Morse did in 2012 when a replay review gave him a home run and he went back to the plate and took a fake swing and circled the bases. But instead they said, eh, no, we'll just let it slide. This time you get to keep your homer and not do the trot. And he took them up on it. And so home run, no trot. I wonder if his decision would have been different if he hadn't been on the road,

right? Because there's something about, like, you've already, you've hit a home run, right? You've dealt your damage to the Twins and to their fans. And, you know, you might be a player who fans are in this particular year, more inclined to boo than your average visiting player. And so I wonder if part of the calculus for him was, well, I don't have to do it. And they're gonna boo me if I do. And so maybe I'll just stay here because who wants to be booed? Whereas if he had been at home, you know, and that had happened, the crowd would no doubt be inclined to cheer for him and be excited because he has just hit a home run. And yay, we love Jose Altuve.

And so I wonder if that factored into his decision making at all, whereas he might have been more inclined to collect his roses in front of a friendly crowd. Yeah, no, that makes sense to me. Anyway, it hasn't caught on yet. It hasn't started a trend or anything, but hey, at least there's some precedent. So I wanted to mention that. Always fun when something weird that we talk about happens almost immediately after we talk about it. So let's get into the foreign substance stuff. So the big announcement came out, the details dropped on Tuesday, and we learned a lot of things that had been hinted at or rumored. In some cases, this went, I think, further than anyone expected it to go.

So this is going into effect on Monday, the 21st. You know, we can link to some of the full explainers, and I'm sure most of our listeners have read the details by now. But this is going to be extremely strict enforcement, at least at first. Every substance is banned aside from rosin, which is still legal and provided to pitchers. So not even pine tar, not even sunscreen and rosin. If it's sticky and it's not rosin, it is banned and it is illegal and it will get you ejected and automatically suspended for 10 days with pay. And that suspended player cannot be replaced on the roster during that

suspension. So in theory, this is going to work with just frequent inspections throughout the game, mandatory multiple inspections of each starting pitcher, but every pitcher is going to get checked at some point, and they're going to make an effort to do this between innings or after pitching changes to minimize delays to the game. but there's going to be pretty constant scrutiny here and position players are not exempt from that scrutiny either catchers can get checked position players if they are found to be supplying something to the pitcher they can get ejected too and the pitcher is just going to be held responsible, even if you end up with a situation where there's some sticky substance that was placed there by

another player, the pitcher still gets the boot. So that does away with, or at least makes it difficult to get away with some of the loopholes or end arounds that we had speculated about before. And there's a lot to discuss here because this has been pretty divisive, understandably. And I don't know that there would have been a way to implement this without it being divisive because we're going from nothing to everything, to the full court press. I mean, even with the long lead up to this and the memos and the reports and the rumors, it's still sort of jarring to have it actually happen just because I've grown up with baseball where pitchers use foreign substances and everyone knows and it's wink wink and almost nobody gets inspected,

let alone ejected and suspended for this. And no, we are going cold turkey on the substances and full speed ahead with the enforcement. And it is happening soon. Yeah, I just this is a tricky one, as we've discussed. I don't love the acceleration from sort of zero to 100, which is perhaps a silly metaphor to use here. But in the middle of a season, I just don't know that that was the right approach for the league to take here. I think that a season of data collection that would allow pitchers to adjust over both a longer period of time and in environments that are lower stakes, right, that can focus on

shifting your grip and changing your approach rather than having to do those things while still trying to compete in the middle of a season would have perhaps been preferable. And I think that it's fair for hitters and for fans who are sort of tired of this to say, well, there is a rule on the books and there were memos sent, right? There were warnings. There were warnings. And there were memos sent, right?

There were warnings. There were warnings. But I think that this sort of midstream adjustment fails to account for the sort of broader environment and sort of atmosphere that pitchers were operating within, which we know to be one that came without an emphasis on enforcement from the league. And did come with, in some cases, explicit endorsement, in some cases, a supply of substance from the teams themselves. And so I think that it's perfectly acceptable for us to say, look, this is not the platonic ideal of pitching that we want to see. We want there to be a better balance between offense and pitching. We think that the way that pitchers are loading up the ball now is materially different than it was even a year ago. And so the circumstances on the ground have changed such that it merits intervention. But I don't know that while I agree that the situation

has changed from what it was a couple of years ago, I don't know that it's that materially different from what it was like a year or two ago. And so given that, I don't know that it's that materially different from what it was like a year or two ago. And so given that, I don't know that we, that the league can say like, Oh, I can't believe there's gambling going on in this establishment. Right? Like they could have said at the end of last season, look, we have the sense that, that stuff has moved around and that you guys have, have moved past sort of the the area where we were all kind of comfortable with you operating and so this off season get your house in order because next season we're going to look things are going to look really different and that wasn't quite the the tact that they took and i attacked that they took's really... It's hard to avoid the puns even if you're not trying

to. And I'm not. And I know that I'm prone to pun. I have a pun proclivity, but I'm really not trying to lean into that here. And so I think that that part is sort of putting pitchers on their back foot and putting organizations on their back foot in a way that feels clunky and ham-fisted and thus sort of in keeping with the way that MLB has sort of conducted itself around stuff like this in the past. And so I'm not especially keen on that. I don't love how little participation there seems to have been either through the players association as a way of sort of aggregating player preference, or, you know, just on an individual player level, right?

This seems to have caught a lot of people sort of by surprise in terms of how stringent the enforcement is going to be. And I think that given how radical a departure it is, even just from a buy-in perspective, that probably would have been advisable in a way that seems to have been absent here. So it feels very MLB, which means it doesn't feel great. Yeah. It feels MLB in a lot of ways. It doesn't feel MLB in the sense that they're actually doing something about it. Right. Yeah, that part's a departure.

It's new. And that's the part. I am happy about it in a broad sense because it's happening, and I think it does make sense to do some sort of crackdown and that there is reason to think that it will improve the game. And I think it's better to act on this than let it slide and continue to worsen. And I'm also somewhat encouraged by the fact that they're being more open about the details and their plans than we had feared that they would be. Yeah, that's true. You know, whether they're being open

about their real rationale for doing this and for doing it now, I don't know, but at least it's not what we thought it could be, which is just sort of a secret memo that is maybe leaked. And there was a memo sent to teams, which we got our hands on, but there was also a press release put out, and this is all very transparent and public and everyone knows what's happening and when it will be happening. So that part is good, I think, in a departure from MLB's recent practices. But you're right, the mid-season implementation, no matter how many warnings you give, I think just because of the long history of not doing anything about this problem, until you actually imposed the inspections and the suspensions and all of that, no one was really going to do anything realistically.

They weren't going to stop using stuff. You could have warned them to your heart's content. And so when you actually start the crackdown, that's when the pitchers are actually going to stop using the stuff. the crackdown, that's when the pitchers are actually going to stop using the stuff. And so it is highly unusual, certainly, to make a move this drastic in the middle of the season. Is it necessarily bad? I'm not sure. I think there are bad aspects of it. I think one positive, which is probably not the most important consideration, but purely from an analytical perspective, it is actually pretty helpful to have it happen. Right. We're going to get a pretty good natural experiment here. I mean, we're close to halfway

through the season and we're going from sticky stuff to, in theory, no sticky stuff. That's going to give us a pretty clean reading, so to speak, on what the impact of this was. So I'm looking forward to that just as an analyst of the game. So I'm fascinated by this for any number of reasons. I think the total ban on all substances is something that has generated the most blowback, understandably. And that really was raised to a higher level on Tuesday when Tyler Glasnow, who unfortunately is hurt and has a partially torn UCL and a strained flexor tendon and could be headed to Tommy John surgery, though not immediately. He's going to try rest and rehab first. He came out and

didn't lay the blame solely at this policy, but he laid a good portion of the blame. And he acknowledged that he was using sunscreen and rosin up until his last couple outings when he weaned himself off it in preparation for this crackdown. And to be clear, when I heard this, when I saw some tweets at first, I thought, OK, I don't know that I buy this. Like he's Tyra Glass now. He throws 100. He's had wrist and forearm issues before. It would not have surprised me to learn that he had this injury. We've seen all sorts of injuries already. Clearly, the grip enhancers are not preventing injuries. Injury rates are up for pitchers and for all players.

And I think there had been more Tommy John surgeries performed by the end of May than there had been in all of 2019. So these problems are prevalent as it is, and he's in a high-risk group as a really hard rower. So I was inclined to dismiss it and chalk it up to coincidence. Then I watched him, and I listened to what he said. And I'm not 100% convinced, but he made a pretty impassioned and persuasive case that there could have been a connection here. Essentially, he said that because he went cold turkey with the substances, he was then trying to grip the ball harder and that he woke up the next day and suddenly

muscles were sore in ways that they were usually not sore or other parts of his arm. You know, he did acknowledge I throw 100 and that could have something to with this, but he made a pretty convincing link. And it wasn't just Glassnow. James Buffy, the biomechanics expert who used to work for the Dodgers and was a guest of ours on episode 1601, he tweeted, Glassnow has a point. Pitchers' forearms have adapted to having sticky stuff help them with grip. When you take that away without giving them an adjustment period, He tweeted, The same muscles that contribute to grip strength also protect the UCL. When they're fatigued, the UCL is more vulnerable.

And his analogy was imagine bench pressing for 10 years with a spotter who was doing too much and fully supporting 25% of the weight. Then one day in the middle of the set, the spotter stopped spotting you and said, you're on your own. You would have to take a few plates off and work back up gradually. And so the question is, well, is the unintended consequence of this going to be that suddenly we're going to get a rash of arm injuries, which would be bad. And there are multiple reactions to this that you could have. You could say, well, tough, you were cheating. Them's the brakes, essentially. And that's a valid perspective, I guess, although it doesn't really help from the fan perspective, which is that Tyra Glassnow is really good and he's a lot of fun and it sucks that we're not going to see him pitch for a while and it would

be bad if that happened to other pitchers. You could also say, well, maybe you shouldn't have been trying to grip the ball so hard. Maybe you didn't have to. A lot of this comes down to this fundamental question of, do you need something extra in order to throw a baseball with some level of safety and effectiveness? And I think the jury's still out on that. MLB's memo and press release says rosin is sufficient. And obviously many pitchers would dispute that. It's hard to tell. Like, look, you rub the balls up with dirt you make rosin available is that not enough that is what pitchers used for much of baseball history it seems they were able to throw baseballs as slick as the surface sometimes may be especially lately it seems with the way the

ball has been fluctuating you know it is it's ice or something. You can get some kind of grip and maybe there is just some sacrifice to be made here where you don't expect to get the same level of grip and that's okay. Like that might be a feature, not a bug. Like maybe that's the point is that you don't feel like you have as great a grip because you don't. And so that's why you don't get the same spin boost. And maybe that's all right. On the other hand, to say that you have to go from being used to this thing to nothing, or at least to rosin from one outing to the next with maybe some tinkering in the bullpen in between or something as a way of getting used to it. Well, maybe that is a lot to ask and potentially disruptive and too abrupt so they're like logical and compelling points and and counterpoints and i don't really know where the answer lies

necessarily well and i think that that's probably why trying to do it midstream was was something of a mistake you mentioned that the the leaks memo, like makes some pretty strong declarative statements about, you know, the effects that it has on grip and control and, you know, that it is perhaps the reason that we have seen the spike in hit by pitch. And it's making these very strong statements without a ton of evidence. And, you know, it's a nine page enforcement memo. So maybe that's an unrealistic expectation to place on it. But I think that these are things that we have some means of studying. And like, if you look at the work that's been done this year, trying to unpack what's led to the spike in hit by pitch, I think that this question is to say that loading up on sticky stuff has not seemed to necessarily mitigate hit by pitch, but we also don't know the extent to which if you didn't have sunscreen and rosin, you'd see more hit by pitch. There's just a lot here that we don't know. places in this memo are wanting only because they seem to be somewhat understudied and we have the means to at least get closer to an answer or expose more pieces of it and know what part specifically this plays in it. And I think that I'm about to use a driving analogy. So I know that

I'm going to lose you for a second, but right. If your understanding is that you can always go 10 over in a 60 zone, right? You're on the highway and you're like, the speed limit here is 60, but everybody goes 70. And I want to keep up with traffic because everybody's going that fast and the cops aren't really, you know, writing me a ticket at 70. So I'm going to go 70. And then you're kind of cruising along and you have a couple of people who are suddenly going 100. It makes sense that you want to mitigate that behavior because it is much more dangerous to go 40 over the speed limit than 10, right? But those are distinct, morally distinct actions from one another, right?

They're ones that we might not want to so readily collapse into one another and call equivalent because it's much more dangerous to go 40 miles an hour over the speed limit than it is to go 10. And I don't know exactly where on that speed limit continuum we are right now, right? And I'm open to the argument that like actually everyone's going 100. And so we need to crack down because there aren't any 70 mile an hour drivers anymore. It's only guys going 100 and it is having a universally bad impact on the game. And that may well be something that we could bear out with greater study, in which case, like, yeah, I think intervention is necessary.

But I just don't know if we really quite know the answer to that question. And given that it has the potential to, at the very least, sort of alter the trajectories of some pitcher seasons, perhaps because it does lead to injury, perhaps because they just get out of whack trying to go from driving 70 to driving 60. I think it bears further scrutiny. Now someone can say, well, what about all the hitters whose trajectories are altered? And that's fair. That's a fair question. And I just don't quite know where the balance is between those two things right now. And I think that that's part of why I have frustration with the way that the league has approached enforcement here, because I think that we probably, you know, we probably had someone on

the side of the road going, wow, those cars are going a lot faster now. Yeah, right. You know, before now. So I think that we had maybe a window where we could have approached this with a greater degree of specificity and sort of data and that window closed, but we're still trying to do the enforcement midstream. And like, you know, I think that there are a lot of, I don't want to call them conspiracy theories necessarily, but people are sort of leaping to the worst possible interpretation of the league's action here, right? That this is meant to fracture the union ahead of a CBA negotiation and that this is meant to draw attention away from the fact that they changed the ball again and it's having a bigger impact on offense than they expected it to. And I don't know how much I buy those particular theories as sort of like a purposeful strategy on the league's part. But I also think that they probably should have been cognizant of the fact that the level of trust between fans and analysts and players in the league is pretty low right now. And that that might be the lens through which people read this.

We finally get a full season of baseball after this terrible year that we had last year and now we're in the middle of a sticky stuff debate and sometimes you have to have like conversations you don't want to at times you don't want to have them because like you just have to adjust to stuff and address it before it gets way out of hand but it does feel like we had an opportunity to have more of this conversation earlier when we could have come into the year with like a clean enforcement environment. And we missed that. And that's a bummer to me. Yeah, I don't know how much.

And look, I don't know if MLB was actually planning to be more proactive about this than they were. I kind of doubt it. But it's possible that the pandemic delayed plans or just because there were so many other logistical concerns with actually scheduling the season, or can you have these close-up inspections, physical inspections, while you also have social distancing and pandemic protocols and unvaccinated players and all of that. And so maybe that made it more difficult to implement before this season. And maybe they were hoping that just by saying that they were closely monitoring these things,

players would get spooked and back off. And that hasn't happened. That seems to be what the beginning of MLB's memo implies. And again, I don't know if this is disingenuous or not, but it says, unfortunately, and this is from Michael Hill, the senior vice president of on-field operations, unfortunately, the enhanced monitoring we implemented at the start of the season has had no impact on the behavior of many pitchers.

The information we collected over the first two months of the season shows that the use of foreign substances by pitchers is more prevalent than we anticipated. In fact, we have learned of numerous complaints from position players and even some pitchers is more prevalent than we anticipated. In fact, we have learned of numerous complaints from position players and even some pitchers that the use of foreign substances is more prevalent than in prior seasons. So they're suggesting that the problem is just so pressing and so acute, and it's worse than they thought, and it's getting worse, and so they can't wait. It's just so urgent. It has to be done now. I don't know. And I don't know that the problem could have been more prevalent than I anticipated. My baseline assumption has been that this is completely prevalent. Everyone's using a thing.

Yeah. So I guess 100% would sort of surprise me, but anything less than that just wouldn't really surprise me. So again, this is a little bit like the league being shocked that this is taking place in their establishment. And I don't know that that shock is genuine. I will say another possible perk of this, and I don't know whether this entered into the thinking at all, is that as we are entering the CBA and we're constantly discussing and debating all of these experimental rules and proposed rules and partner league rules, it is also helpful to know whether this is going to work now. Just because if part of the CBA talks and the accompanying talks is going to be, how do we fix baseball? How do we make baseball look better? And how are we going to implement our roadmap to that over the next several years? Well, knowing now, just from the second half of the season, whether this works, whether this does the trick, whether it's negligible, whether it gets us part of the way there, you know, I don't think this is going to be a panacea, but if it helps, then maybe you don't have to do 10 other things. possible positive byproduct of doing it now. Another possible reason why you would want to

just have a bright line and ban everything that is sticky is for the ease of enforcement and so that umpires don't have to try to determine what substance is being used. And, you know, it says that umpires or there have been reports that umpires have not been trained to distinguish between those substances. And that's another case where you could say, well, maybe they should have taken a little longer and given them that training. I don't know whether umpires could ever be perfect at distinguishing between substances. Like I just, I don't know whether some of them resemble others enough that they could pass for more potent substances or less potent substances. Or if you

say that this is allowed, but not that, then are you encouraging teams to try to come up with some mix that looks like this thing, but is actually this thing? And then are you right back where you started? And is it going to take longer for umpires to try to determine what the substance is as opposed to just determining that there is a substance. So I don't know. In that sense, maybe it's good that you just say, nope, we are sticking to the literal interpretation of this rule that all foreign substances are bad and banned, and that might make it easier to enforce, which is good coming on the heels of decades of non-enforcement. On the other hand, there is also the issue that by allowing sunscreen and rosin to be legal individually, but then banning them in concert, that just seems like a difficult thing to pull off. That's probably the most amusing part of

the memo to me is how they explain how umpires are supposed to navigate that. Because rosin's legal. Sunscreen, you have to let players use sunscreen. I mean, melanoma is an issue in baseball. They're playing outdoors during the day a lot of the time. So you can't ban that. But then how do you prevent them from mixing those two things together? So it says players may not intentionally combine rosin with other substances, for example,

sunscreen to create additional tackiness. To avoid a potential issue, pitchers should not apply sunscreen during night games after the sun has gone down or when playing in stadiums with closed roofs. Okay. To the extent an umpire discovers sunscreen mixed with rosin on a baseball or pitcher, the umpire will determine whether the mixture of sunscreen and rosin was intended by the pitcher for use on the ball, taking into account the personal observations of the in reality, they'll just kind of let it slide because they don't want to try to determine whether it was intentionally mixed or not. But that's a complication that I don't know how you can completely get around unless you do decide to legalize it. Well, and it's like no matter what you do, there are going to be people who want to try to skirt the rule and they're going to behave in a way that tries to circumvent the observation of the umpire. So if we accept that the enforcement environment can't be perfect

and that maybe the way that you want to supplement your understanding of what you're able to see with your own eyes is to test balls afterwards, then why not allow, say, like, I mean, and I guess that they're saying that sunscreen plus rosin is a sufficient enhancer of spin so as to transgress this line. Yeah. According to the memo, their testing has shown that even the traditional stuff enhances spin rate, which I think has been backed up by some of the other public info out there.

Like not to the extent that some of the more exotic substances do, but you can't just say it's purely to make sure that you don't hit batters in the face. Like it is also enhancing your spin. Right. So I guess that from their perspective, what I'm about to say is just a non-starter because It's purely to make sure that you don't hit batters in the face. Like it is also enhancing your spin. So I guess that from their perspective, what I'm about to say is just an on starter because they think that it is a performance enhancer. And so they want it out of there. But it's like if everyone else kind of agrees that it's fine, like if the hitters say, and as an aside, why are we not just like surveying all of the hitters to say, what is your opinion

of this? Where is the bright line for you? Right. And then use that to supplement the actual research, analytical research being done to arrive at some kind of conclusion of like where we are comfortable with this. Right. Because we keep saying, well, hit or say, and, and I think that a lot of good reporting has been done on this question and there does seem to be a range of perspectives on it, but it doesn't seem that hard to say, okay, hitters, what do you got for me? Like, what do you think the bright line on this should be? Because I don't think that it's crazy to say that the player should have some say in what they want the enforcement environment to be, right?

Where is the line for them? Because if their understanding is sunscreen and rosin, we're good with that. That is a level of grip and maybe spin enhancement that we are comfortable with, but spider attack is bad. Arrive at where the line is, and then maybe the league can say, okay, we know that this is acceptable to us both in terms of the feedback that we have gotten from players and the competitive environment that we want to foster. And so here is the league-approved sticky stuff, right? This is just like rosin.

This is your rosin bag, right? This is MLB's secret stuff. And then you can have your bottle or tin or whatever the hell they put in of MLB sticky stuff, and the umpire can hand it to the guy and he can watch him apply it and you'll know what's in that and then you test for the rest and after the fact you say all right you use spider tack that's not the MLB sticky stuff so 10 game suspension for you or whatever like the the necessity of putting all of the enforcement in the moment or at least so much of the enforcement in the moment, or at least so much of the enforcement

in the moment, I think kind of boxes them in, in a way that isn't necessary, right? Like I get that you want to make future use problems, present use problems, right? This is part of why they're doing it the way they are. They want, they want there to be immediate consequences so that you were deterred in the moment, but there are still going to be people who want to use sticky stuff and they're going to try. And I don't know that this necessarily gets at all of those people. And I'm not just saying that to try to set up our interview, Ben. Yeah. I guess it's hard to come up with a substance of any kind that gives you the grip that pitchers seem to want without also enhancing spin to some extent. Maybe there is some acceptable level of spin enhancement, and maybe there's some level that's acceptable to the players. I suppose it's possible that not all hitters are actually familiar with some of the research and the tests that have been done. I mean, maybe if MLB circulated the results of its research and said, hey, here's how much spin rate is enhanced by substance X and substance Y, that would be helpful.

But otherwise, you might just get some hitters who think it's not that big a deal, but it actually is. And maybe they'd be their own worst enemies if they said it was okay. But I do think you should take what the players want into account. On the other hand, I kind of wonder whether if you do cut them off and you just say, no sticky stuff allowed, what if that goes okay? Like what if nothing terrible happens? I mean, what if hit by pitches don't increase or even decrease? What if you get fewer whiffs and more offense in the game? What if you don't have a rash

of injuries maybe it's okay like maybe you're not going to get pitchers to voluntarily and happily surrender this stuff but if you take it away and you say well we'll rub up the balls with dirt and here's your rosin and just make the best of it that they'll go on with their lives and it'll mostly still look like baseball and they'll just get used to it and we'll have lower spin rates and more contact and all of that. So it is possible that doing the thing that there might not actually be the political will to pull off without everyone revolting, if you were to put that system in place and it's not a total disaster, then it would be hard to argue after that that actually we need to go back to having some substance because maybe you don't.

Maybe it is just convention and tradition and some desire to get a grip that feels like normal to pitchers, but that normal is itself a performance enhancer to some extent. So I kind of get why there might be some advantage to just cutting them off entirely, but there are also ways that that could go wrong and there could be unanticipated consequences aside from the anticipated consequence, which is that everyone's mad about it. So that's part of the reason why I'm so fascinated to see what will happen because we've already seen the spin rate declines. I just wrote about this. Others have written about this over the past week or so. Like there have been some pretty significant league wide declines, which would not be so significant for an individual necessarily, looking at the daily averages for those pitches. And the six days with the lowest average four-seam spin rate this season have all been since June 8th. I mean, it's not

a coincidence. Some of the individuals have caught Twitter's attention, but really it's this league-wide issue. And that was before any enforcement was in place, before any of the details were actually announced. So I don't even know what percentage of pitchers had already backed off the stuff and what percentage were switching from some more potent thing to some less potent thing that still will be banned now. It is possible that next week we will see an even more precipitous decline. And that could really produce some significant differences. But again, we don't know. But at least we're finally able to find out. But we're already seeing those indicators and those symptoms of what is to come.

And I should mention, too, that scoring is also up over that period. And I do expect scoring to increase as a result of this. And I do expect scoring to increase as a result of this, but I would still caution people not to do direct before and after offensive comparisons without considering the context. Because we're in mid-June now, the weather is warmer, offense is always up now. I did in my latest article at The Ringer, you'll see a significant jump there. And what we've seen so far this month is not wildly out of line with where it was in, say, 2016 to 2019. So spin rates fall. We're almost certainly going to see some sort of offensive improvement, but it would be wildly overblown if we didn't account for the fact that offense always perks up at this point of the year.

Yeah, I mean, and so this is where I think as a, like as a public analyst trying to approach the question with the appropriate amount of nuance and the appropriate apportionment of blame and not wanting to over under react and not wanting to look back and be like, wow, I really underestimated just how big an impact this was having and wanting to, you know, incorporate the perspective of players, but also be cognizant of the fact that they're not always aware of or, or sort of deferential to data. It's really tricky, right? To like come up with the right perspective on this, because I don't want to participate in a moral panic. And, and I, and I will say that I think that in general, like the coverage of this has been pretty reasonable on that score. Like people are saying like, yeah, this is clearly impacting offense. The league let it go on for a really long time. Conditions on the ground are different, but we could have probably acted before now. So here we are, right?

Rather than, you know, like if you go back and read the accounts of people realizing, you know, in a way that they couldn't really ignore anymore the impact that steroids was having on the game, like the moralizing was contemporaneous to them. Like people didn't hold back and years later say, you know what? That Barry Bond sure did piss me off, right? Like that didn't, that's not how the trajectory of that conversation went. And I don't think that we, at least so far, have fallen into that particular trap, which is good. And maybe part of that is because, you know, public facing analysts were some of the people

who were raising the alarm about this going back a couple of years. And so it's been a thing that has been perhaps not at the forefront of our discourse about like what baseball should look like, but has been present in that conversation, right? Like, you know, Eno and Travis and folks were writing about this in 2018. Like this has just been around. So I am conscious of wanting to like approach it with the right level of seriousness on all sides. And it is tricky. And I don't want to give people a pass for like hosing hitters,

right? But I also am skeptical that this is the ideal way to deal with this, but maybe there isn't an ideal way to deal with this. And our expectation that it be perfect from an enforcement perspective is just like not the way that we want to necessarily grade this out. I don't know. Like you said, we're going to get a lot of information really fast probably. And it'll be really interesting to see like kind of where we are in a couple of months. And I just hope that we can approach it as a collective with like the right level of perspective on it. And I don't know.

I'm fascinated to see like where we're going to end up. on it and I don't know I'm fascinated to see like where we're going to end up but I know I really I am fascinated too because some people have speculated that it will be a very slight difference in offense and that is absolutely possible although if that turns out to be the case that'll be hard to square I think with the idea that this is this arms race and teams and pitchers are all universally using this stuff and are coming up with more and more elaborate and effective substances. Would that be the case if it didn't work? I mean, I guess players have employed counterproductive strategies before, believing that they were helping them when that wasn't the case.

But you'd think with the data that teams have, if they're pushing this on players, then they must have a reason to. I think, you know, with the data that teams have, if they're pushing this on players, then they must have a reason to. And just given the public information that we have about how all else being equal, having more spin enhances movement, which tends to enhance performance, like, it would be weird if you actually did eradicate the stuff and nothing significant happened. So I don't know. And I think it would be, even if the injury rate doesn't budge and more pitchers don't get hurt, there's the possibility that any pitcher who does get hurt, because some inevitably will, will blame it on the sticky stuff the way that Klasnow did. And that would be bad. That would look bad. It'd be a PR problem. And a lot of people would believe it, even if it wasn't the case and was kind of a coincidence. So that will continue to be a storyline most likely. I mean, there are all kinds of unintended consequences, secondary effects that could come from this. I mean, will pitchers start nibbling because they're afraid to throw the ball in the zone now that they don't have that unnatural movement? And then will that mean more walks and longer plate appearances? And will batted balls carry any differently if there's not sticky stuff slathered all over the leather? Will we see less drag, better carry?

Who knows? I mean, will the game slow down despite MLB's best efforts? Are there certain teams that it will become clear, oh, they were the real sticky stuff offenders because their pitchers will nose dive in spin rate more so than the typical team? And will that affect their performance and pennant races? And there are so many considerations here. Will people throw sinkers again, which has been kind of falling out of fashion now that

maybe the high spin pitches aren't quite as valuable anymore? Will we find that we miss the pitches that look like they're moving like wiffle balls and we get excited about those gifts if those aren't happening as much anymore so there are all kinds of things that could come from this and i guess the last thing is just about the hit by pitch stuff which we've puzzled over before about why it's happening and as you said there's no clear consensus on why that is and so it's's very hard to map out how this will affect things without knowing what's happening now. But that was probably the most counterintuitive claim in the MLB memo. And I found it plausible and logical in some ways, but I think it's probably a tough sell

to a lot of people. And they say, first, our research, including numerous conversations with accomplished current and former pitchers, demonstrates that the rosin provided for is sufficient alone to address any serious concerns about grip. And, you know, again, that could be. Probably most pitchers would disagree or a lot would. In fact, foreign substance use appears to be contributing to an overall decline in control because it enables a style of pitching in which pitchers sacrifice control in favor of spin and velocity. I don't know that that's true, but I buy it. I entertain that it's true. It sounds reasonable to me. And I think you could even have sort of a Peltzman effect situation where pitchers feel like they have better grip. And so they're more

inclined to buzz batters because they feel like, oh, I can thread the needle here. I can throw it close to him without hitting him because I'm using my super sticky stuff. And maybe if you take that away, they're less confident that they can do that. And so they stay away a little more and you do end up with fewer hit by pitches. And obviously, as you mentioned, the increased use of these substances has correlated with a higher hit-by-pitch rate, which is not in itself proof that there's a causative relationship there, but certainly establishes that using these substances was not who are driving the hit by pitch rate counterintuitively and that pitchers haven't actually had demonstrably worse control or command and aren't really throwing pitches that are way inside and wild and are more likely to hit batters. So if that wasn't happening, then maybe that wasn't the problem all along.

So again, it's tough to say. And MLB says, we are confident that pitchers will be able to adopt a delivery that enables them to grip and control the baseball effectively without the use of an illegal substance and safely, I suppose, is implied there as well. And I'm also pretty confident that that could happen given enough time. But I don't know that it can happen overnight. And unfortunately, I'm sure most of the pitchers have procrastinated when it comes to actually figuring out how to pitch without this stuff. And so, yeah, we see pitchers who are gripping the ball in the way that they were before, even though they don't have the same substance, trying to achieve the same spin rate, even though they can't anymore and hurting themselves in the process, it's easy for me to say, well, just don't do that. But they've taught themselves to pitch a certain way. So who knows what will happen, but it's going to happen soon, whatever it is. Right. And I think that it's just

that at the root of this question is the reality that baseball is really hard. It's really hard to hit stuff that spins like crazy. It's really hard to hit stuff that spins like crazy. It's really hard to adjust your grip on the fly in the middle of a season. Baseball is really hard. And I don't envy the league having to balance the different competing kinds of difficult that it is, right? And trying to arrive at something that feels fair to everyone. And I think that often the solution to that problem is to give people more than seven days notice. And again, people could argue, well, Meg, they did that. They wrote their memos earlier. But I think that a pitcher in an organization would be forgiven for thinking that, what's that, a football for me to kick, when the last suspension was six years ago or whatever. So it's going to be a really fascinating case study in adapting rules and moral parameters on the fly, not to say anything of adapting pitches on the fly. And I hope that I guess I hope it works. Well, I don't know.

Yeah. Well, this really could be sort of a sea change. So we will see sometime soon. And, you know, I thought Manfred at least didn't go out of his way to turn the players into villains in the press release. Like maybe that will be the effect. But it did at least say this is not about any individual player or club or placing blame. It is about a collective shift that has changed the game and needs to be addressed. And that probably is a

good way to look at it, given that we have spin rates that are attached to individual pitchers, and everyone is scrutinizing those incredibly closely. I don't know that that is how it will actually be perceived. I think probably individual players will get singled out, but it would be good if we tried to, I guess, move forward more so than focusing on who the offenders were, but obviously acknowledging that the league and the teams bear a lot of responsibility here. And I did enjoy trying to sort of parse the language to see if MLB was admitting any blame whatsoever. And, you know, not really. I mean, they didn't come out and say, our bad. You know, we were lax here. We contributed to this. You could read it in a way that sort of indirectly acknowledges blame. Like Manfred said, we have a responsibility to our fans

and the generational talent competing on the field to eliminate these substances and improve the game. Well, therefore, I mean, if the substances have been prevalent to this point, as he acknowledges, it would follow then that MLB has thus far failed to uphold that responsibility, right? Like that's a necessary conclusion there. And he also

said, I understand there's a history of foreign substances being used on the ball, which, you know, acknowledges that, like, they knew this was going on and has always gone on. And it was MLB's responsibility to stop that from happening. And they didn't take that. So I guess that's the closest they came to sort of throwing themselves on their sword, but not explicitly and not directly really. But anyway, here we are. And last thought, I suppose, is that you used a driving analogy earlier

and you know who else used the driving metaphor when it came to this situation? None other than our friend Scott Boris. One of his better ones, in my opinion. Yeah, you know, he gave a statement to Ken Rosenthal, and it's a few paragraphs, but the metaphor part, certainly the latest iterations of gripping substances and advances in performance measuring technology illustrate

we have gone from the grip freeway to the performance enhancing autopon. Yep. So yeah, you know, not bad. I followed it. I understand what he is saying, which is a rarity for him. So good job, Scott. Yeah. The rest of his statement is worth reading, but for the sake of our listeners, that's

the pearl. Yep. He also ended his statement with four exclamation points. Four exclamation points. So an excessive number. I think Manfred should have done that too. Yeah, it's just an excessive number of exclamation points, in my opinion. Three, like, stick with three.

Like, come on. Be a maniac. Well, much like Tyler Glassnow's UCL, I am partially torn about all of this. But I am also interested in it all and heartened that it's happening, however, belatedly and imperfectly. So I'm sure that we will be returning to this in the coming days and weeks and months as we start to actually see what the results are. We will also be returning to this after a brief break.

And we will be back shortly with Josh Beck to talk about what criminology has to say about MLB's approach to punishment and deterrence. All right. Am I the victim or the crime? Or the crime? All right, we are back, and we are sticking to sticky stuff. We are joined by Josh Beck, Effectively Wild listener, which is not listed in his Twitter bio, but a few other credentials are. He is a criminology Ph.D. student in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Georgia State University. He is the managing editor of the Journal of Qualitative Criminal Justice and Criminology,

and he is an assistant to the director of Criminology Open, a nonprofit whose mission is to increase the quality and quantity of free information and knowledge pertinent to the study of crime and control. And he is here to share some free information on the study of crime and control with us. Hello, Josh. Hello. Thank you guys for having me on. Yeah, happy to have you. So I take it that most of your work is not directly related to baseball, unfortunately,

but tell us a little bit about what it does concern, what your interests are, what kind of work you do and what you study. And then we will get into how that potentially relates to baseball in this case. Yeah. Unfortunately, baseball very rarely comes up in criminology. But I am a primarily a qualitative researcher doing research, studying graffiti, graffiti writers and graffiti subculture. So, you know, I look to do interviews and use that as my primary source of data. I find it helps to really make sure that what we think the numbers are saying, it actually says that by talking to the people who are actually doing it. But I am going to be teaching

a criminological theory class in the fall. And as I was prepping for the class, I could not help but notice some real similarities between this idea of deterrence theory and how the MLB is trying to go about getting rid of stuff. Yeah, I can imagine there's some overlaps there. trying to go about getting rid of stuff. Yeah, I can imagine there's some overlaps there. I'm curious, why graffiti? What drew you to that? And what insights have you come up with there? So Elena is really a hotbed everybody thinks of, you know, New York and LA. But Elena is a really thriving graffiti as well as street art scene. And in particular, I, you know, used to drive every day to campus and would drive under a bridge where this one particular writer, Vane, had written. And just on this overpass and, you know, you drive by enough times sitting here going, how on earth? Why on earth?

And then you start to, you know, dig in. For me, the most fascinating thing is just you're putting your name on a crime, whether you think it should be or shouldn't be. It's vandalism. And in the city of Atlanta, it only takes $500 of property damage to be a felony. And so if you're putting your name on every instance of vandalism, then if somebody was so inclined. It does not take too, too much to connect the dots in terms of your previous work. And so I've always been fascinated as to why people are willing to put themselves out there and what motivates them. Yeah, I can understand why that would be of interest to you.

So you actually emailed us partly prompted by a discussion that we had recently about streakers and about the idea that streakers get banned from ballparks or stadiums and how do you actually enforce those bans and it's tough to do there's some ways you can do it but it's not perfect but the insight that you shared with us is that it's not necessarily just about catching them again or preventing them from coming to the park but it's about the deterrence value of banning them and the threat of what would happen if they did get caught again. So I guess if you could share any thoughts on that and then sort of segue into how that relates to the issue that we're talking about now with foreign substances because deterrence is a big consideration there too. Yeah, no, absolutely. And the beauty of it is, I think, in the simplicity. The MARTA, the mass transit, you know, subway system and everything here in Atlanta is notorious for

quote-unquote banning writers for being too loud, doing any number of things that are against the policies. And no matter what, a lot of people will still hop right back on. And there's no real interest in MARTA to actually waste the time, energy, and resources to ask everybody, hey, what's your name? Are you on this banned list? But it does a very good job of making sure that those writers are on their best behavior, because if something happens again where they need to, you know, if you are pulled over or if you're stopped by MARTA police, then when they run your name, it'll pop up. And it's essentially a two strikes, you're out.

And it kind of gets at this idea of deterrence theory, which is how can we take a negative behavior and what can we do to make sure that you don't do it again? And all of that comes real briefly from this idea of rational choice theory. It's an idea in economics as well as criminology. And the idea is that whenever we make any sort of decision, we perform a cost benefit analysis. We're not pulling out spreadsheets and calculators and the slide rule trying to calculate every last thing. And a lot of times these decisions are made with incomplete information and not in particularly the best frame of mind, but we weigh the good and the bad and essentially decide what is going to bring us the most pleasure, at least in that moment. And so the idea of punishment is to tilt that cost-benefit analysis

and make the cost higher and essentially try to increase the risks and minimize the potential rewards. It's been around since the 18th century with Jeremy Bentham, and it just attempts to get at human behavior. With deterrence theory more specifically, the idea is one of two. It's either going to be this general deterrence, which is we're going to make an example out of this one person so that no one else even thinks about breaking the rules. Or it could be individual deterrence where we are going to punish you so much that you will never, ever consider doing this again. Within that, there's this three very important key elements, and it's the idea of certainty, swiftness, and severity. And it basically, punishment needs to be certain. If there's any chance that I'm not caught and not punished, then why not? If I can get away with it. Right.

In terms of swiftness, the punishment needs to be as close to immediate as possible for it to get the full deterrent effect. And then severity, it needs to hurt enough for me to change my behavior in the future. So for applying this to the sticky stuff situation that we have right now and the approach that Major League Baseball is taking to its sort of renewed enforcement, right? Because this rule was always on the books, but now they're going to actually go about trying to enforce it. How would you evaluate the approach that they are taking based on the criteria that you just laid out, right? So they are, and we'll remind our listeners for those who maybe haven't been as deep in the weeds on the sticky stuff as we have been in the last couple of days, that if a pitcher is found to have a foreign substance on him, it results in an immediate ejection. They're checked several

times during the game. If they're a starter, they're checked at the conclusion of the first inning that they've come in or the end of their appearance, if they're a starter, they're checked at the conclusion of the first inning that they've come in or the end of their appearance if they're a reliever, whichever comes first. And if they're found to have sticky stuff, they're ejected from the game that they're in and then they face a 10 game suspension during which time their team is not able to replace them on the roster. And then they're escalating punishments for repeat offenders from there. So given kind of that set of punishment criteria, how do you evaluate like how they've constructed this particular version of their enforcement policy? You know, on its face, it definitely seems at least at deterring pitchers, it seems promising. Obviously, there are different wrinkles that come up in terms of how strong you can punish individuals.

I think, you know, with the Players Association, potentially somebody could argue that, oh, if you're caught once, you should be banned for life. But very, very few people would let that go down without a fight. So, again, kind of hitting the three big themes here. Swiftness. It's immediate. There's no discussion. There's no, we're going to send these balls off to the lab and then figure out later. So that checks that box. In terms of certainty, trying real hard to avoid using all these, you know, get sticky puns. Thank you. Thank you. the umpires bring out their chemistry sets and tests to make sure that, oh, is this spider tack? Is this rosin? Is this sunscreen? Is this some other mixture we're not aware of? There's also the addition of how good are these pitchers going to be at being able to hide it? If we believe the league, like they have some pretty thorough dossiers on, you know, regular big time offenders and what they, you know, they tend to go

to their belt, their glove, their whatever. But it's definitely much more certain than it has been. It's a debt, again, it's going to be weighing in the, you know, it's a check in the win column, as far as I'm concerned. Severity becomes a bit of an issue, I think. So you can't replace the player. That's great. That's good. But teams with pay, teams can tweak lineups and tweak the rotation and potentially only have that pitcher missing one more start. There are going to be escalating penalties.

What that looks like, I don't know. And if it does dramatically increase similar to steroids type thing, then I think that very, very quickly becomes a lot more than teams are willing to do just to have potentially an inning or two before a player gets caught. It's interesting because I think for a lot of non-baseball players, you know, we hear suspension, we hear, you know, all this, and it sounds very like, OK, definitely not. I don't want to miss 10 games. The other day, Jonathan Papelbon tweeted, shared his thoughts on sticky stuff and said, quote, it's not cheating unless you catch me. I'm always looking for an edge.

And if you get me, I'm going to pay the piper. And so if any number, but particularly if a larger number of players are perfectly fine with that punishment that they think they can get away with, then there's going to be at least a few people who aren't likely to be deterred, at least not simply by this first rollout. Once the penalties get escalated, then there's definitely some potential for that cost benefit analysis to be tilted for real. But yeah, I mean, at least for the players, it seems very positive. Yeah. And the idea you brought up of general deterrence versus individual deterrence, I would assume that in a case like this, you're going to be more concerned about general deterrence because this is such a common quote-unquote crime from everything we've been led to believe. This has been incredibly prevalent

as MLB's own press release and report concluded. So if we were talking about some violent, brutal crime or something, then most people are probably not going to be inclined to do that regardless. So maybe you focus more on the individual deterrence, whereas in a case like this, it's really about how do we stop everyone from doing it, which has been basically the case up until now. Yeah, and it definitely varies in terms of the effectiveness. And this is just kind of coming from criminology, not necessarily a baseball specific. Although if anybody out there wants to write a paper, it definitely seems like there's some room in criminology to make some comparisons.

But I think one of the most intriguing parts of this for me is when we look at deterrence theory for the general population in terms of crimes, like you were saying, we always talk about like the death penalty. Most people who would be deterred by the death penalty being a potential punishment are also not ever going to murder anyone. And so they are deterred just by the simple nature of what it would take to commit a crime that would lead to that punishment. With the MLB, we have some of the greatest baseball players in the world right now. And they are incredibly competitive. They are very good at what they do. If the part of the reason why so many of these people got here was because if there is an edge, whether that's training more, eating better, doing any number of different things, good, bad, ugly, they took advantage of it. I mean, we have Moneyball because of

somebody saw a competitive advantage and they jumped all over it. This spider attack and all the sticky stuff has become a competitive advantage. Clearly, every team is involved in some way, shape, or form, or the one team that isn't using it would be having the umps check every single opposing pitcher. Because what kind of competitive advantage is better than, hey, we're facing their, you know, their ace, and we're going to get them out before the first inning. But there's this fear that if I point fingers, then somebody else is going to be pointing back at me, and my guy're going to get them out before the first inning. But there's this fear that if I point fingers, then somebody else is going to be pointing back at me and my guy's going to get popped. So it's definitely interesting, but this is kind of one of the weaker points in the comparison just because I think this is such a unique sample of incredibly talented, competitive

individuals just kind of looking to get whatever edge possible. Well, I imagine one of the other differences is that it's not usual if you're just a civilian in everyday life to have a situation where there's a law on the books that everybody violates regularly, right? Because there isn't an enforcement priority placed on it. And then an enforcement agency, a law enforcement agency announces, okay, in a week, an enforcement agency, a law enforcement agency announces, okay, in a week, we're going to start actually writing tickets in this section of the highway where everybody has sped in the past, but we never really ticketed you before. That doesn't seem like a thing that probably happens all that often in real life. But I'm wondering if there are parallels in your studies that might give us some insight into what it does to the sort of inclination of

the individuals being policed to comport with the law when they have sort of advanced warning that all of a sudden, no, no, we're really going to take it seriously because you guys were doing 70 and a 60 before, but now you're doing a hundred and we have to tamp this down because we're concerned about, you know, car crashes or what have you. Is there any real precedent that we can point to in criminology that might give us some insight here? In terms of specific examples, I can't really think of any. But, you know, I'm big on theory. If we go back to the theory, then people aren't necessarily going to take it seriously until that punishment becomes real.

I was personally shocked to see whether it's real or not or what have you. Spin rates already start dropping. I expected there to be, you know, after however long of, come on, guys, don't do that. Come on, guys, don't do that. And the only real time anybody actually getting popped for foreign substances was when Teneda put it on his neck. And at that point, it's just so blatant that you're making a mockery of the game. But it was kind of it was essentially, for all intents and purposes, decriminalized for so long because everybody was doing it. And it wasn't the end of the world. because everybody was doing it and it wasn't the end of the world.

I would be incredibly shocked if we did not see a much bigger drop once these punishments, once that first pitcher gets ejected because I don't think everybody's going to stop cold turkey. It's been this way for so long. It's been a part of the game. It's been something that everybody's talked about kind of in hushed tones up until recently. But I mean, the MLB released a number of memos saying, guys, come on, knock it off. And then essentially the next one is, guys, really, please, come on, we're begging you. And then it's like, oh, we're going to punish you. And then people go, okay, how? And it's like, well, we're going to collect some data first. But this is definitely the most coherent and the most thorough last year. This has been in the air.

It's clear that it's been coming, but we haven't seen any perceptible decline in spin rates until the last week, essentially, when it got really serious. And it was like, okay, this is about to happen. So even if you're not getting punished today, you at least have to figure out how to pitch in this world that we are about to enter here. And that's when you suddenly saw the spin rates fall. So they could have sent memos till the cows came home and nothing ever would have changed. So clearly you do need the certainty and the severity and all of the factors that we were just talking about. And I was trying to think of some kind of comp in my own life, which I guess the only near daily law-breaking behavior

I engage in would be jaywalking, which is deeply ingrained. I've done it my whole life. It's extremely normalized here in Manhattan. We all kind of laugh at the tourists when they just stand there staring at the don't walk sign and we all just walk. And I was trying to think of like, well, what would convince me to stop doing that? You know, it would have to be, there's a cop on every corner, you know, even if there were like a system of cameras or something and they monitored me doing it and sent me a ticket later, like I would have to be pretty certain that I was going to get caught in order to stop doing this thing that I'm used to doing and that, for the most part, I find to improve my life in some way. So that, I think, is maybe the most interesting tenet of deterrence theory, which is that the certainty seems to be the most important factor, that certainty of getting punished matters more than the severity

of getting punished. And I think that makes sense if you put it in the baseball context. We can quibble about whether 10 days with pay is severe or not. It might sound severe to some. I think to baseball fans, it sounds pretty standard because that's kind of the traditional penalty. I saw Charles Barkley weigh in on this for whatever reason, and he said, oh, 10 days with pay, basically a paid vacation. And he was saying, why would you stop cheating, essentially? But I think if you consider it certain, if you know that you are going to get caught, then there's absolutely no value to using the foreign substances because the value is enhancing

your performance and if you know you're going to get caught then you're going to get ejected and that's going to do the opposite of enhancing your performance and you wouldn't even need the suspension really like if you knew for sure i'm going to get thrown out of this game which is going to hurt me and is going to hurt my team that that's all you'd need, really. And maybe we don't have that total certainty, so you also need the added severity of the suspension. But that's the research-based finding, right, in most cases that the certainty matters most. Yeah, absolutely. And in the field of criminal justice, there's this idea of the number of crimes committed just exponentially outweigh the number of convictions and imprisonments and what we would traditionally

think of as punishments purely because the system just can't handle it. Things fall through the crack. It kind of creates this funnel effect, whether it's I commit a crime and I don't get caught, or I get caught but charges aren't pressed, or there's pretrial diversion programs, or I get off in trial, or any number of things. And so the punishment, again, kind of going back to the death penalty, the death penalty has been generally found to not have a significant deterrent effect purely because people in that situation go, well, what are the odds I'm going to get caught? What are the odds I'm going to actually face any real sort of punishment? And particularly with these huge, big punishments, and we see this in baseball as well, not only

the severity, we got that checked off, super severe, lifetime ban, whatever. The swiftness then also becomes an issue. Anything that big, there's going to be some sort of appeals process. And the further we get from the bad behavior that punishment is actually enforced, then the weaker that connection is and the weaker the deterrent effect is. Speaking particularly to sticky stuff, it really does not matter. I have to assume baseball players think quite highly of themselves. I, for one, don't necessarily have that level of confidence that it would probably take to be a professional athlete. But, you know, they got there. They know they can do it. Chances are a lot of these guys

have been using this for at least a couple of years now. And some are more blatant than others, but there's still some that, you know, it takes somebody breaking it down and slow-mo on Twitter going, oh, did you see how he pulled the string of his glove? If there is any chance in their mind that they think they can get away with it, then the rewards far outweigh the risk because we're talking careers and we're talking about money and things. And so the certainty is something that I was pleasantly surprised to see that the memo, the press release definitely covered. And so huge part of why I think that this will actually be successful. I'm not sure if I'm going to phrase this question in a way that is comprehensible. So let's give it a shot. And this is as much a philosophical question, I guess, as anything else. What your sense is of individuals' likelihood to be deterred

in a situation where the rule in question maybe collapses a couple of different sort of moral violations into one, right? So we have this sense in baseball that players, and I don't know that we've actually substantiated this claim by talking to enough hitters, but like, let's just assume that this is true for a moment, that players, including hitters, don't necessarily have an objection to the use of sunscreen and rosin being used because there's a sense that it improves grip on what is otherwise sometimes a slick ball, and it isn't being used because there's a sense that it improves grip on what is otherwise sometimes a slick ball and it isn't being used to improve spin and so that sort of falls into an area where even though it is technically in violation of the rules it's something that players broadly think is

morally permissible so like let's just assume that's true for a moment. And then you have spider tack and other sort of super substances that are clearly meant to increase spin on the ball and provide a competitive advantage to pitchers over hitters. And that we've determined to be too far over the line. And this rule in the interest of sort of an umpire, to your point, not having to use a chemistry set on the side of the diamond, collapses those two transgressions into one transgression, right? We're going to ban any combination of rosin with sunscreen, just like we're going to ban spider tack, and this is all one big transgression, and it is all met with similar enforcement and severity of punishment. And I'm curious if, to your mind, that collapse of transgression leads to a player being more or

less likely to try to skirt the rule, because the rule isn't sort of sufficiently morally responsive to the circumstance. I don't know if that question makes any sense, but the collapse of those things into one is really interesting to me because I get why in the interest of them having on-field enforcement, they kind of had to do it, but it does sort of equate to things that I don't know players see as morally equivalent to one another. Sure.

that I don't know players see as morally equivalent to one another. Sure. And in criminology, there's this idea of neutralization theory. And that is how you reconcile this whatever bad act with some sort of rationale in your head. Oh, he deserved it. Or it's not, you know, if I'm jumping the subway turnstile, oh, no one's really getting hurt. You know, we tend to think of these ideas of like victimless crimes and, you know, we tend to get very idealistic with, oh, who cares if I smoke some marijuana because, you know,

the government really has no right to blah, blah, blah. And we tend to make ourselves feel less guilty about breaking rules. The average individual tends to be more of a rule follower than a rule breaker. I would not at all be surprised if there's a number of pitchers who sit there and go, this is dumb. This is unfair. This is, you know, sunscreen and rosin has been around since the dawn of time. I don't know.

And we've said that's okay for so long, so long. And then essentially a couple of people come in with the stuff strong men use to lift those Atlas stones and ruin it for everybody else. I don't think it's enough to somebody who normally wouldn't break the rules, break the rules. But I do think it is enough for people who are kind of on the fence about this and going, this is unfair. It's not that big of a deal to go. That is kind of the straw that breaks the camel's back where they go, it's really not that bad. I'm not breaking any rules. We're still protecting the integrity of the game and all these big abstract feelings and emotions we have about this game. So related to Meg's question there about just making it a blanket ban and having this bright line between sticky and not sticky, as opposed to asking umpires to differentiate

between certain substances or, you know, maybe just ranking the severity of the transgression and charging people with third degree sticky substance and second degree sticky substance or something like that. It's just sticky or not sticky, which has been divisive as we discussed earlier, but at least in its simplicity and how it makes enforcement easier, I guess there is some merit to that idea. So I wonder if there's, again, any analog to a real world situation or criminology theory there in terms of taking the judgment call, taking the subjectivity out of the hands of the people applying the law and just saying we're sticking to the letter of the law and we're taking it extremely literally, which in some cases may produce negative effects, but at least has the benefit of no one's going to be confused about what they can and can't do. We're not going to get sticky stuff creep where people start to use things that are sanctioned and then transition to other things, which is maybe how we got into

the situation in the first place. Maybe just sticking literally to the no foreign substances is the way to go if we really want to root this out. So I wonder whether you see any parallels there or any advantages to trying to take some of the complexity or the nuance out of it and just make it bold-faced like that. out of it and just make it bold faced like that? Off the top of my head, no, I can't think of anything that would be analogous to this. But again, we're going to go Russian back to theory. If there seems like there's any potential for any sort of gray area between, oh, well, you know, I didn't intentionally do this if it's sticky or if it's not sticky. There's no degrees of sticky. There's no, did you make this sticky on purpose? Is it sticky or not? It definitely helps ensure, again, this idea of

certainty because the MLB has already kind of said, hey, like we will catch you. We are going to be checking you multiple times. You will get so sick and tired of us, like sending the umpire over to come check your belt, your glove. But not only if we find anything, it's done. You're going to go head to the showers early. I think even stepping out of my area of expertise here, I don't know how else you would do this. It may be unfortunate and people may not love it. But again, we can't sit here and not that this is going to be the silver bullet for length of game, but all of a sudden,

these complaints are going to start getting way more legitimate if we got to take a 15 minute break between every every inning just to to figure out to to what degree of stickiness is this is this rosin and sunscreen was this intent you know that it's sticky or it's not and maybe mlb comes up with a more nuanced and elegant solution, but I worry that unless they are spot on, and I'm struggling to think of how you would do this any better, given the constraints, unless they're spot on, I think you're opening the door to uncertainty of punishment, which is just going to make a whole bunch of very competitive people try even harder to get away with it. I don't know who else would do this, so I will concede that before I even ask my question. But it does strike me as a little bit odd to have a body that was certainly aware of the use of

sticky stuff and not keen on enforcing a ban on it prior to now being the one to suddenly be tasked with sort of stringent enforcement of its rule, because, you know, I think we can kind of disagree on the degree to which they cultivated a culture of cheating around this, but they were clearly not prioritizing enforcement of this existing rule prior to now. And so guys, you know, I think could be forgiven for thinking that it wasn't really something that they were ever going to have to answer for in much the same way that like umpires never enforce the fraternization rule in the field, right? And so what do you think about the body that was sort of complicit, might be too strong of a word, but complicit in this rule being

habitually violated now being the one sort of tasked with enforcement of that rule. It really, really pains me to say this, but I don't think we can hold the league. We can't hold the league to, you know, to blame. Clearly, there was a piece in The Athletic, I'm blanking on who wrote it, but it essentially kind of laying out that this happened because it went unchecked. But in fairness, I don't think as far as I'm aware, it wasn't until the last couple of years that at least I am aware of that it shifted from this, well, maybe it is control and maybe it is, you know, cold and rainy and you do need that sunscreen and rosin too, this is purely for a competitive advantage.

And so I think it is incredibly helpful to take a little bit of nuance here and acknowledge that this problem has grown and developed particularly rapidly. I mean, when I first emailed Ben, I said, I ended the email with, you know, of course, unless you guys are tired of talking about this sticky stuff and only want to bring it up when it's particularly noteworthy. And now if I get off Twitter for more than a couple hours, something new is popping up and somebody else has an opinion about it. And the MLB is now saying this and that so it's like clearly this is an issue obviously it mirrors back to steroids that's the comparison a lot of people have been making just both in terms of cheating and how complicit the MLB was I was born in 95 so I was

not I mean I was around I was in st. Louis at the time actually so you know I probably witnessed it firsthand going to a couple Cardinals games. Why didn't you stop it? Home run saved baseball, Meg. What do you want from me? But it's a much more compelling argument to sit here and say, oh, yeah, it'll be a lettuce slide because the home run race helped revitalize and re-energize baseball. Got a lot of eyes on it. I'm, again, not even my own personal experience that might qualify to really talk much more on that. But with this, it's so frustrating how low the bar has become for, hey, good job, MLB. You're getting on this early. But even then, this conversation probably wouldn't be happening if we didn't have people like Trevor Bauer sitting here talking all about it.

And then all of a sudden, oh, I would never do it. I have morals. And then all of a sudden, the spin rate goes through the roof. So go figure. But I don't know who else. It doesn't necessarily make us feel great. And I think in certain stories like this, it's okay to not have a quote-unquote good guy. We don't necessarily need to give the MLB too much praise for taking care of this.

We can just simply go, thank God they didn't wait too much longer. I don't know if that's a good enough answer, but I can't run back to theory on everything. So the last thing I wanted to ask, we're going from the old normal being no enforcement. I mean, you know, six years since the last time someone was suspended and it's rare that anyone even gets checked to the new normal, at least if MLB's plan is pulled off, being constant vigilance, constant inspections and suspensions if anyone is found to be using anything. How long do you think that kind of vigilance can be maintained? I wonder, again, whether there's any precedent here, but is there a kind of fatigue that sets in where if you maybe don't find a ton of people doing this because they were deterred, then your own standards and your enforcement gets a little lax just inevitably because you think, hey, the system is working and no one is using anything. So I'm just going to give this a cursory check or maybe we'll let it slide. And then potentially you open up the opportunity for that sticky stuff usage to creep

back into the game. Or maybe you can actually just dial back the checks and the inspections because that just becomes normalized now and no one is cheating and a new generation of pitchers come in who haven't been raised using this stuff. And so it's not something that they're used to. And so you can kind of dial it back. I wonder whether you have any thoughts on how long it's feasible to maintain that stance of constant vigilance and how long you actually need to to ensure that that standard is upheld. The first thing I thought in terms of this idea of how long do you have to stay vigilant as people tend to get more comfortable with things and get more used to it, it's going to inherently get lax. I know after I first got my driver's license, I did a full stop, the whole 1-1000, 2-1000 at every stop sign. And now I still do if there's a police car behind me, but otherwise we're doing the good old-fashioned

rolling stop just because I'm more comfortable and I'm more confident and clearly a bad driver. But you could definitely play out a couple of different ways. If there's tons of pushback, umps could very, very quickly do a absolutely cursory. All right, let me look at your hat. Feel. Don't feel anything sticky. Touch, touch. All right, you're good to go.

Or they could, because they're sitting here going, if I throw this guy out, I'm going to have to throw the manager out too and it's gonna be a whole thing and you know it's a long day it's late at night this reliever just came in I want to go home or they incredibly vigilant and actively looking and I hesitate to say trying to bust the players but if they feel strongly enough then they might be out there looking because if everybody's doing it and i look hard enough chances are i'm going to find it i think that then has bigger implications that i'm i don't trust that mlb has fully considered in terms of

the on-field relationship because is you also can say on the podcast, this is a workplace, a weird workplace that none of us can ever really fully understand, but these are still people you have to work with. And so I think that'll definitely be interesting. As for how long, I would definitely err on the side of overkill as opposed to, eh, this is probably good enough. Just because, again, these players are competitive. They're looking for every single edge. That's what's got them there. That's what's going to keep them there.

And any relaxing of the rules and the strictness, again, I can run back to theory on this one, just reduces the certainty that there is going to be a punishment. Okay, well, thank you very much for coming on. This was a pleasure and you gave us a ton to think about here. I am suspending you from the podcast for 10 days with pay for occasionally saying the MLB.

Have I taught you nothing? Ben, I wasn't going to say anything. I can't let this go unremarked. Look, if we don't say something when it happens, then it will become pervasive and we will end up with everyone saying it just like everyone has been using sticky stuff. So this is me taking a stand. And I'm sorry I'm doing it at your expense, Josh. As long as I still get paid, I think we'll be okay. the same amount that we paid you to join us here today. You can find Josh on Twitter at Josh Beck CJ. And thank you again. This was great. Thank you guys for having me.

Well, Wednesday was another night of spin watch and sticky stuff questions. Garrett Cole was asked about it after his start. He said it's so hard to grip the ball. He said a lot of pitchers will have to adapt that it is possible to pitch well without high spin. And his spin rates were down about a couple hundred RPM relative to his average before a couple weeks ago, and he still pitched well. He held the Blue Jays to two runs and four hits over eight innings, albeit with four strikeouts, and that's sort of the dream of this, right? That

Garrett Cole's still going to be good, he's still capable of pitching well, but maybe he'll sometimes have four strikeouts instead of 12 strikeouts, and that wouldn't be a bad thing. Of course, Garrett Cole is also throwing 101.5 miles per hour, so not everyone can do that, and that at least he can do without sticky stuff. Now, someone who did not pitch as well was Red Sox starter Garrett Richards, who allowed six runs, four earned on seven hits over four innings against Atlanta. And Chris Cotillo tweeted, Garrett Richards said he basically abandoned breaking balls tonight because he couldn't grip them effectively.

So a fastball-heavy approach was all he had, said he may have to develop a new pitch. And I just don't know what to make of this. When he says that he can't grip them effectively, does that mean he literally cannot throw them? They won't break. They'll fly off in random directions. Or does he mean he can't throw them with the grip that he's accustomed to and the spin and movement that he's accustomed to? The former would be bad, probably bad for baseball.

The latter is sort of the point, right? That's why this crackdown is occurring. So I don't know how much of this is just the adjustment of, hey, my pitches are not as effective anymore, and how much of it is actually, this is untenable, this is unsafe. I do have sympathy up to a point, but when it's, hey, I can't throw a breaking ball anymore because I'm not allowed to cheat, I just don't know. That's maybe a bit much for me. It does seem like even if the surface of the ball is slicker than pitchers would like, a major league pitcher should still probably be able to throw a breaking ball of some sort. So, you know, I think there's going to be an adjustment period here where pitchers may have to resign themselves to just pitching less well than before, which is not necessarily a crisis, that aspect of it at least. In fact, that may be a good thing, not for them,

but for the game as a whole. Now, one pitcher who had no trouble with diminished effectiveness on Wednesday was Jacob deGrom, who through three scoreless innings lowered his ERA from.56 to.54, struck out eight of the nine Cubs he faced, including seven in a row. But yes, you've picked up on the problem there. He only faced nine Cubs, and that's because he was pulled with shoulder soreness. So we're adding to the litany of physical complaints here. Just this season, it's been the side, the back, the elbow throw that hard. And I just don't know. He was hitting 101 in this game too.

He was essentially sitting 100. And yes, he is unhittable, but he also lasted three innings. And part of me, of course, is saying, yes, throw hard, throw harder. I want to see how hard he can throw. It's almost miraculous that he is throwing harder and harder. And the other part of me says, well, I just sort of want to see him pitch.

He won Cy Young Awards when he was sitting 96,97, so we know he can succeed at that speed. And if adding three or four miles per hour to that is contributing to the injury issues, which we can't say with certainty, but is pretty plausible, then again, maybe the guy who has a two ERA, let's say, but throws 200 plus innings ends up being more valuable on the whole than the guy with the one era or lower who doesn't go deep into games it may be less simple than that but something to consider as we keep up the de grom era watch as the season proceeds in other news shohei otani bunted for a hit hit another home run and stole a base it was the third time this season that he has bunted for a hit and hit a ball harder than 110 miles per hour in the same game. And he was the next day's starting pitcher. Totally normal stuff. And lastly, Williams Astadillo walked. And that is notable where Williams is concerned. His most recent walk before Wednesday was September 24th, 2019. If I did the addition correctly, he went 153 plate

appearances between walks, 119 of those this season. So it took him 153 plate appearances to walk once. Guess how long he went before walking again? One plate appearance. Yes, that is right. He walked in back-to-back plate appearances. Go figure. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. Kimoteo Cobertizo, Eric Edston,

Joseph Villareal, Adam Schlissman, and Roger Crayan. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg coming via

email at podcast.vanagraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And we will be back with one more episode before the end of the week. Talk to you soon. Outro Music